Abstract
Social judgments of faces predict important social outcomes, including leadership decisions. Previous work suggests that facial cues associated with perceptions of dominance and trustworthiness have context-specific effects on leadership decisions. Facial cues linked to perceived dominance have been found to be preferred in leaders for hypothetical wartime contexts and facial cues linked to perceived trustworthiness have been found to be preferred in leaders for hypothetical peacetime contexts. Here we sought to replicate these effects using images of women’s faces, as previous studies have primarily focused on perceptions of leadership abilities from male faces, with only a handful of these including female faces. Consistent with previous work, a linear mixed effects model demonstrated that more trustworthy-looking faces were preferred in leaders during times of peace and more dominant-looking faces were preferred in leaders during times of war. These results provide converging evidence for context-specific effects of facial cues on hypothetical leadership judgments.
Highlights
Social judgments of faces predict important social outcomes, such as romantic and platonic partner choices and hiring decisions (e.g., [1,2])
One area that has received considerable attention in the social perception literature is the role that social judgments of faces play in hypothetical leadership decisions
The current study investigated hypothetical leadership decisions using female faces that varied naturally in perceived dominance and trustworthiness for two different leadership contexts; peacetime and wartime
Summary
Social judgments of faces predict important social outcomes, such as romantic and platonic partner choices and hiring decisions (e.g., [1,2]). Several studies have found that people whose faces are judged to look dominant or trustworthy are preferred in hypothetical leadership decisions [7]. People with masculine faces are generally perceived to look more dominant [8] and tend to be preferred as leaders in hypothetical wartime scenarios [9]. People with feminine faces are generally perceived to look more trustworthy [8] and tend to be preferred as leaders in hypothetical peacetime scenarios [9,10].
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